Tough as Hell
by voxinatwitch
Summary: Oneshot. After Bobby's injuries, Sam and Dean try to find a way to let him know he's as important as ever, and still part of the fight.


This is just a oneshot. Weird topic, I know. More explanation at the bottom as to why I wrote this. Anyway, here goes.

….

"What the hell you been doing out here? Ya idjits? Just coz' I'm in this damn thing don't mean I don't have a brain in my head. I know when you two're hiding something…" Bobby called out as he rounded the corner, making his way up the makeshift plywood ramp over the mudholes in the drive, into the shop.

He paused as he entered, seeing Dean hunched over something, some project, no doubt, scrubbing away at whatever it was, his back turned for a moment until he stopped what he was doing to address the older hunter.

"Yeah, so what do you think?" Dean asked as he put down a can of metal polish and the rag he'd been using as he stepped back from the item he'd been hunched in front of.

"It's…." Bobby stared, trying to make sense of what he saw. Dean had been working on….a wheelchair? He crossed the room in a burst of short, quick pushes to stop beside the wheelchair, eyeing it up and down. It was different from his current ride, everything about it sleekly minimalistic down to the shine of its polished frame, where in contrast, his seemed the epitome of obtrusiveness.

"Where the hell'd that come from?" He asked after a long moment, scratching his head absently.

"We built it," Dean replied, shrugging.

"And how exactly'd that happen?" He scoffed, his eyebrows knitting themselves into a skeptical line.

"Well, we did some googling, and, yknow," Sam mumbled.

"_What happened_ is we decided to fix you something. Saw how, yknow, being stuck in that thing wasn't exactly making your life any easier," Dean nodded toward Bobby, earning a disgruntled look, which he ignored as he continued talking, "And Sam got to researching, showed me this wheelchair athlete guy's blog. Get this, the guy's got instructions from where he builds his own sports wheelchairs. Turns out the welding you taught me is good for more than body work on cars. So I got a little bit of aircraft grade aluminum tubing, with a little time on the blueprints and measurements, Sam ordered the wheels and stuff, and, well, there ya go. I mean, I know it ain't perfect, but…"

"Perfect?!" Bobby sputtered, his tone something between irate and excited. "You're going on about perfect?! How long'd you spend on this?!"

"Eh, past month or so, on and off, between the usual research and the werewolf and the demons." Dean said, swatting the air with one hand as if to dispel the matter.

"So, do you, y'know, want to try it out?" Sam asked.

"Do I? You think I want to stay in this damn thing? Hell yeah, I'm gonna try it out!" Bobby motioned to the other chair, which Sam pushed closer to him.

He pushed himself to the edge of his seat, pausing to lower his feet to the floor as he got ready to make the switch. He shook his head at Sam who was hovering a little too close, that same expectant 'I just want to help' look on his face. Bobby grunted his approval as Sam stepped back to stand behind the other chair, bracing one hand against a crossbar on the backrest for added stability as he finished transferring. With a low grunt, Bobby lifted himself off his old chair, sliding across, over the wheel to settle back into the new one.

Although he couldn't feel the fit on his lower body, he could tell it was much closer, as he reached to lift his feet to rest on the small metal platform that comprised the footrest. He repositioned himself in the chair, getting the slump out of his torso to sit taller, realizing the lower backrest hit just right, midway up his ribs. He made a face of concentration as he considered the change of balance.

"Before you go saying how we shouldn't have," Sam said nonchalantly, "Know that we wanted to."

"You boys—" Bobby cut in.

"And it ain't coz of some sort of pity," Dean interrupted him likewise, shaking his head when Bobby tried to protest. "No, just, lemme finish." He cleared his throat quietly before continuing. "Since Dad died, you've been like a father to us. It's not like we haven't given you hell. Trust me, we have, and I know that. So we decided to do this one thing for you, OK? "

"I'm not gonna rag on you for doin' this," he said slowly. "For a couple'a idjits, you boys ain't done a bad job." He cracked a small smile, stretching his back as he allowed himself to sigh as some of the aching dulled just a little, the increased freedom of motion of his upper body a measure of relief in itself.

"So…you like it?" Sam asked.

"Well, I'm not sure I _like_ it, seeing it's a wheelchair and I still need it," Bobby said, "But it's a hell of a lot better than that old piece of shit, that's for sure." He glared at the old chair, its flaws becoming readily obvious as he settled into the tailor fit of his new ride.

"Oh, yeah, wait until you see," Sam said, stepping forward to snap something into place on the front frame of the chair. "Take a look."

"What the—is that a holster?" Bobby asked, his voice rising in incredulity.

"Yep," Dean replied, grinning. "Wanna give 'er a try?" He handed him a gun, which he took, holding it for a moment before he snapped into the holster mounted on the frame.

"You idjits…" he trailed off as he pushed himself back down the plywood ramp to the gravel of the drive, where he found he could now wheelie, lifting the front casters over the rock with far greater ease.

They made their way to the edge of the drive, where a set of targets were tacked to trees for firearm practice.

Bobby raised the gun to eye level, taking in the vantage point of shooting for the first time from a chair.

He squinted at the target on the tree for a moment before grunting to Sam to get him some ammo.

"Yeah, sure," he replied, handing him a bag of bullets, from which Bobby quickly loaded the gun.

He now lifted it again to eye level, aiming carefully as he squeezed the trigger.

_Bang. _

A smile spread across his face in spite of himself as he stared at the tattered target, which he'd hit dead on.

"I be damned," he muttered, shaking his head.

"Yeah, and that's not all," Sam cut in, not even attempting to hide the excitement in his voice, "We found plans online for how to make an all terrain powerchair. And it can do stairs. You can go anywhere…."

Bobby didn't hear much of this, a little too busy staring transfixedly at the target.

"I can shoot," he mumbled aloud.

"Yeah, not just that, though," Dean said. "Don't you get it? You can hunt again. You're still you, still just as tough as hell."

Bobby chuckled.

"Well, I don't know how to thank you boys," he said, looking back down at the revolver in his hands, before reaching to snap it back into the holster.

"Oh, just shut up. Keep doing what you've always done. Keep bein' you," Dean rejoined.

"Sounds fine to me," he muttered back. "Now, why don't you boys go get me that shotgun…" They stood by, watching quietly, as he whipped the gun back out, smiling in satisfaction as he took several quick shots in succession. He paused to reload, smiling to himself quietly as the boys filtered off into the house to get the other gun he'd requested, leaving him to his target practice.

...

So, I know this is a weird little fic. I've got to be the one person in the world who watched the show and got this out of it. That they wrote Bobby to become paralyzed, and followed the whole 'I'd rather be dead than crippled' cliche. So, why I am bothering writing this at all? At the time I watched that season, I was quite disabled, depending on a wheelchair for everyday activities. A big issue in the disability world is the perception of people with disabilities as 'suffering a fate worse than death' which does a lot of harm to the real people who find themselves facing such circumstances. I guess I'd hoped what with the super-resourceful, utterly badass character of Bobby, maybe they'd subvert this unfortunate stereotype. But no such luck. Yeah, so, maybe I'm being the PC police. I dunno, but that's not what I wanted to write this for. This was just my take on what I wish had been done, or something like it.


End file.
